John Oliver Discusses Voter ID Laws

With the presidential election about to kick off as both the Democrats and Republicans choose their candidates to run for President, John Oliver chose voter ID laws as his topic on his show.

Oliver brings up many valid points regarding how ineffective and harmful voter ID laws can be to the voting process. One major flaw is that many people simply do not have the proper form of ID required to vote. What makes matters worse is how difficult it can be to obtain the proper ID if you don’t have one. You need various documents proving who you are, and some people have had to make multiple trips to the required government building to try and get said ID. In some parts of the country, the offices that issue IDs are hardly open. In an extreme case the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin the ID office is only open on the 5th Wednesday of every month. For those of you trying to do the math, there are only four months in 2016 that have 5 Wednesdays. That’s a great deal of planning you need to make in order to get an ID.

Oliver also points out the hypocrisy of those who are fighting for Voter ID laws. The common reason used by politicians who campaign for these laws claim it will prevent fraudulent votes, but voter ID doesn’t prevent those crimes. However, those same politicians have been shown on video “ghost voting” where they vote on laws and then cast additional votes for people who are not in attendance when voting takes place. Seems like fraudulent voting isn’t a big deal when they are the ones doing it.